A blog about dancing through cancer treatment

Getting hard–but it looks like the competition is a go!

I had a good talk with Boss at the start of my lesson about the competition.

The cost is not too bad (just under 4 figures), and there is a possibility that I may be able to do my silver medal tests in the same weekend–which really adds to the appeal.

Boss and I talked about the advantages and disadvantages to doing this competition. While there are some clear disadvantages, in the end, the advantages do outweigh them.

Boss reminded me that we have added a lot to my Latin routines which were not there previously, especially in styling and detailing and my latin technique is a lot stronger overall. So putting the routines on the floor now to compare with back in January would be good overall for seeing the progress and work.

It will also be really good for my mental health overall to have something to break up the fall and to have something to focus on, and in the end this is the most important consideration.

Understanding that is becoming more and more clear as each day of radiation goes by. Every day gets a little harder right now, and every day it takes more and more to convince myself to go to my radiation appointments. Everything is just a little bit harder. I don’t want to imagine what I will feel like in a month, but I hope I will be on the road to recovery and gradually feeling better.

After our talk, I had a good lesson with Boss. Because the lesson was shortened by our talk, Boss decided to review my exercises (which I am due for anyway). He had a few exercises he wanted to progress, so that was a really positive thing to hear and do. We still have a couple of exercises to review tomorrow, but I was surprised how many exercises he progressed.

I hope that progressing exercises won’t become a negative thing. Sounds strange to say, but whenever I progress exercises, there is always about 2 weeks where all the new exercises are just a giant mess and all over the place as my body figures out how to do consistently what I need to do differently.

Unfortunately, one of the most difficult things I am finding is that with radiation fatigue I am getting really frustrated very easily–much more so than I did with chemo. I the difference is that with chemo if i had a bad practice or a difficult time one day, I knew that the next day would be stronger because I had time between treatments that I gradually got a little better before I got worse. With radiation I don’t have that small recovery. Each day just gets a little harder and that is getting hard to deal with.

Even Boss has noticed that I have declined a bit this week. He made a comment about me starting to worry about things, just to worry about them and he is not wrong. I am having a harder time keeping myself in check and even small issues seem huge.

But I am trying to manage it all, and hopefully things won’t get too bad. If I find evening practices after lessons too hard and exhausting I will probably switch to doing them at the gym during the day. I don’t have the benefit of Boss seeing me do my exercises, but at least I will still be getting them in.

One day at a time. Just have to remember that and radiation won’t last forever, neither will cancer.